Hengshang Mountain and more Travel

The network connections have been somewhat shaky recently. Between that and a lot of travel my blog time has been reduced. Yesterday and today were a travel days. However, yesterday we did stop off to see Hengshang Mountain. This is one of the more famous mountains in China because of the Buddhist Temple built on top of it. We didn't actually make it to the temple, but we got close.

To get there we first took the backroads out of Hengyang. This in itself was very interesting. We flet that we were seeing true country life for the first time. Also, there was a significant portion of the rode that was in less than premium condition. The bus driver has a pretty tough job, really. He has to be on the constant look out for farmers, tractors, mopeds, slow moving trucks, people passing and driving in the wrong lane and massive pot holes that could swallow our small bus. He never really got much about 45 mph and we spent a lot of time inthe 25 - 30 mph.

Anyway, after 75 minutes of bus ride, we arrive at the base off the mountain. From there we walk about 300 meters until we come to the public bus station. No private vehicles are allowed on the mountain. We board the bus for an interesting drive up the mountain. It was a narrow lane, but paved all the way. There are a lot of significant Buddhist sites all along the way.

The public bus takes us as far as it can, to the start of the cable car, which we used to take us the rest of the way up the mountain. At that point we are close to 4000 feet and still have an hour walk if we wanted to reach the Buddhist Temple. We, like most of the people with us, decided we were close enough.

After viewing the temple we returned to our bus and drove another 2 1/2 hours on the back roads to Changsha. We spent the night in Changsha and flew out the next morning for Nanjing. All of the sites we are scheduled to see are outside and it rained pretty heavily off and on in the afternoon (rainy season here, after all), so we are going to tour those sites tomorrow on the way to Gaoyou and Emily's orphanage.

Here is a shot of the road up to the temple and one of the many little constructions along the way. There were a significant number of people who walked all the way and did not take the public bus. They used these sites are rest stops.


They really packed us into the cable car. I figure at least 40 people where in it.


Here is a view of the two cable cars from at the top, after we were dropped off.


Here is a photo looking straight down from the cable car. I took this shot approximately from where you see the cable cars in the previous photo.


This is the Buddhist Temple. We decided that the 10x zoom on the photo would get us close enough.


There was an alternative to walking. We could have been carried there for about $30 each, like this man here. It was slightly tempting, if only for the ride.